UnitedHealthcare on Thursday tapped company veteran Tim Noel as its new CEO following the targeted killing of its former top executive, Brian Thompson, in Manhattan in December. Noel was the head of Medicare and retirement at UnitedHealthcare, the largest private health insurer in the U.S. It is the insurance arm of UnitedHealth Group,…
Store closures in the U.S. last year hit the highest level since the pandemic — and even more locations are expected to shutter this year, as shoppers’ dollars increasingly go to a few industry winners, according to an analysis by Coresight Research. Major retailers, including Party City and Macy’s, closed 7,325 stores in…
A war of words between Elon Musk and Sam Altman escalated on social media Thursday, as two of the most powerful men in tech sparred over their rival artificial intelligence initiatives. The latest exchange began after OpenAI, where Altman is CEO, was revealed as a key player in Stargate, the AI…
Italy’s high court has upheld the remaining conviction against American Amanda Knox, who was jailed and later acquitted of the 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher. Knox was convicted of slandering her former boss Patrick Lumumba by falsely accusing him of Kercher’s murder. Knox, 20 at the time,…
The female Palestinian inmates were made to kneel in a line on a cold evening last Sunday on the grounds of Israel’s Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank. “This is not a victory for you. We have destroyed and killed in Gaza, in Yemen, in Syria, in Iran. We…
A British teenager who murdered three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event was jailed for at least 52 years on Thursday, for an atrocity prosecutors said was so violent it appeared he had tried to decapitate one of the victims. On Monday, Axel Rudakubana, 18, admitted carrying out…
Taiwan plans to cull up to 120,000 green iguanas, with supporters urging humane methods to bring down the animal’s population, which is wreaking havoc on the island’s agricultural sector. Around 200,000 of the reptiles are believed to be in the island’s southern and central areas, which are heavily dependent on…
The Israeli government is seeking to keep military positions in southern Lebanon past a Sunday withdrawal deadline, set in a November ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah, the country’s ambassador to the US said on Thursday. The Israeli military invaded southern Lebanon on October 1 – the culmination of a…
A Chinese man who carried out a knife attack in eastern China last June that wounded a Japanese woman and her child and killed a bus attendant trying to protect them has been sentenced to death, according to a Japanese official. A court in the Chinese city of Suzhou ruled…
Donald Trump’s second term in office is getting off to a good start for China. The new US president has so far refrained from acting on his threat to slap hefty tariffs on China, told business and political leaders at an economic forum in Davos that the two countries could…









